More Views

Gerry Healy and His Place in the History of the Fourth International

Quick Overview

A critical assessment of the political career of Gerry Healy (1913-1989), longtime leader of the Fourth International, whose struggle in the British and international Trotskyist movement spanned five decades, until his break with the International Committee in 1985.

Additional Information

Description

A critical assessment of the political career of Gerry Healy (1913-1989), longtime leader of the Fourth International, whose struggle in the British and international Trotskyist movement spanned five decades, until his break with the International Committee in 1985.

Healy's political life - he joined the Communist Party in 1928 and was expelled in 1937 - spanned the degeneration of the Communist International, the catastrophic betrayals and defeats of the 1930s, the founding of the Fourth International in 1938, the assassination of Trotsky in 1940, the Second World War and the entire postwar period.

"The life of such a man is inevitably a concentrated and significant expression of an entire epoch. To study the biography of Healy is to critically examine the essential problems of the Fourth International, with whose development the life of Gerry Healy is inextricably linked."

David North is the chairman of the international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site. He is the author of numerous books, articles, and lectures on questions relating to contemporary US and international politics, European and Soviet history, and the history of the Trotskyist movement, including The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century; In Defense of Leon Trotsky; The Crisis of American Democracy; Marxism, History and Socialist Consciousness; and The Heritage We Defend.